With the advent of digital cameras, digital imaging has been introduced to a mass consumer market. In particular, digital photography equipment is now readily available to the average consumer. Digital photography equipment includes, but is not limited to, digital cameras to capture images and printers to render the images in a fixed form. Currently, printers used to capture and record digital images from digital cameras generally include printers based on laser technology or inkjet technology.
While most printers used to print digital images are coupled to and depend on the presence of a personal computer (PC), a recent trend has seen the introduction of printers that can print images without a PC. In some cases, a connection between the camera and printer is provided by one or more of an array of available interconnect technologies including, but not limited to, wireless networking, universal serial bus (USB) interconnection, and infrared networking. In other cases, a memory card or other memory storage media is used to transfer image files from the camera to the printer. In particular, printers equipped with one or more memory card ports accept a memory card (e.g., SmartCard™, MemoryStik™, CompactFlash™, etc.) from the camera and provide a means for choosing and printing images stored thereon.
Unfortunately, such camera-to-printer printing configurations generally suffer from a common problem created by the lack of a PC in the imaging processing and printing process. Namely, a user typically needs to select and sometimes edit an image prior to printing. While the costs associated with printing images has dropped dramatically in recent years, printing an image may still involve a substantial fixed cost associated with the printing media (e.g., paper) and ink/toner. Thus, it is generally advantageous if the user can view, select, and perhaps edit (e.g., crop, enhance, sharpen, etc.) an image before committing the image to print. Attempts to enable such selection and/or image editing in camera-to-printer configurations include incorporating a display unit (e.g., an LCD display) into the printer and/or printing a proof sheet of thumbnail images from which a given image may be selected for final printing. Adding a display unit to a printer can significantly increase the cost of the printer. While printing proof sheets is less costly than adding a display unit, printing proof sheets wastes paper, ink/toner, and time in the rendering of a final image using the printer.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a means for direct camera-to-printer printing that provided a means for selecting and otherwise controlling the image printing process on an image-by-image basis. Moreover, it would be advantageous is such a direct camera-to-printer image printing avoided the high costs of providing a dedicated printer display unit and/or the wasted paper, ink/toner and/or time using proof sheets. Such a direct camera-to-printer image printing would address a long-standing need in the area of digital image printing.